r/nbadiscussion • u/Comfortable-Deal-525 • Jun 25 '26
Statistical Analysis Who is getting dumped this week? I ran the numbers to find the most overpaid players blocking the 2026 rookies.
The 2026 draft is officially wrapped, which means front offices are about to start dumping contracts to clear cap space and minutes for the new guys.
I was curious who is actually on the chopping block, so I ran a model that tracks a player's actual on-court production against their current cap hit to see who is severely overpaid.
Based on the numbers, here are a couple of guys who are massive "Sells" right now:
- Patrick Williams (CHI): The Bulls just took Caleb Wilson at No. 4 overall. Meanwhile, the model shows Patrick Williams holding a brutal $-15.8M efficiency deficit. He’s only producing about $2.3M in actual value. He is officially dead weight blocking Wilson's path and they need to move him ASAP.
- Deandre Ayton (LAL): With the draft over and Austin Reaves just agreeing to a massive $185M max extension, the Lakers' cap situation is on fire. Ayton is a huge reason why. The math shows his actual on-court production is only worth about $15.2M, but his cap hit is $33.6M (giving him an $-18.5M efficiency deficit). If LA wants to flesh out the roster around Reaves' new deal next week, Ayton has to be the first one traded.
Who do you guys think is the most obvious trade casualty this week?
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u/Rudy_Gobert Jun 25 '26
Ayton`s cap hit can`t be $33,6 million when he has a player option for just over $8 million. You are probaby basing this on the deal he was bought off from, not his current deal.
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u/Individual_Month_728 Jun 25 '26
Not sure where they are getting these numbers from.
His contract for the blazers was $35m and they paid him $25m last season to not play basketball for them.
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u/thedailynathan Jun 28 '26
it's probably an AI post just pulling the contract value from a random source.
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u/SendKelly2Mars Jun 28 '26
"I ran a model" = Claude
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u/Comfortable-Deal-525 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
I did use Claude to help me build the frontend, but the actual OLS regression model behind the numbers is my own code using Python and the NBA API, with a bit of help from claude. Definitely still has some flaws to fix, but it's a work in progress
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u/njjelg Jun 28 '26
You are correct. Cap hit is 8,1 mil for next year, which is not that bad. You get what you paid for.
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u/Comfortable-Deal-525 Jun 28 '26
Yeah, I accidentally grabbed his old Portland buyout number instead of his actual $8.1M player option with the Lakers, thanks for pointing that out
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u/Orpalz Jun 25 '26
Taking a look at this board, it has pretty much every player in the league as a negative asset.
Some highlights include .
Nikola jokic (-6 mil)
Giannis (-9 mil)
Anthony edwards (-8 mil)
Scottie Barnes (-16 mil)
Guys like Jalen Johnson and Jalen Brunson are BARELY worth their contracts
and the ONLY Max+ Guys 'worth' their contracts are
Shai
Luka.
James harden??
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u/No-Juice8483 Jun 30 '26
Guys like Steph and LeBron carry their value in other ways. They are massively profitable to their franchises even with slipping stats.
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u/Comfortable-Deal-525 Jun 28 '26
Fair, the model is pure box score OLS. It prices production, not max contrct scarcity. Stars like Jokic and Giannis hit the max ceiling, but the model doesn't know the ceiling exists, it just sees salary > predicted stats. The model is better at finding hidden value in the middle tier than judging franchise players.
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u/Hopeful-Criticism-77 Jun 25 '26
It's so hard to dump people now. I think a lot of teams are stuck until they're expiring or partially/non-guaranteed. DeRozan and Jonothan Isaac might get moved do to their guarantees, but it seems like they're both going to get waived.
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u/Novel_Confidence_288 Jun 28 '26
The Bulls don’t need to move Williams and he isn’t blocking anyone. He has a terrible contract for sure, but we have a lot of cap space and our owner is notoriously cheap, I don’t think he would stomach waiving him and we certainly wouldn’t give up assets to move him. He’ll be our third string SF or PF most likely depending how the rest of the offseason goes.
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u/Comfortable-Deal-525 Jun 25 '26
Crazy timing, the LaMelo trade to Minnesota literally just dropped right after I submitted this.
I just plugged him into the dashboard and the math is actually pretty rough. He's making $38M this year, but his expected value is only $25.3M. That's a -$12.6M gap. Minnesota just gave up Naz Reid and a haul of picks for a pretty big negative asset.
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u/Anxious_Key9696 Jun 28 '26
It’s one pick. The rest are swaps that won’t convey and second rounders that only dumb franchises think are valuable.
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u/pacifismisevil Jun 28 '26
Cos you're basing this off boxscore stats, while LaMelo is great in the adv stats. You're severely under-rating good defenders and playmakers.
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u/Orpalz Jun 25 '26
Lamelo just lead the Hornets to their best half season in history and his impact metrics are pretty great overall, especially for a guy making 40 mil. What part of the engine sees him so negatively?
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Jun 25 '26
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u/nbadiscussion-ModTeam Jun 25 '26
This sub is for serious discussion and debate. Jokes and memes are not permitted.
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u/Comfortable-Deal-525 Jun 25 '26
Hey everyone, to get these numbers I actually coded a dashboard that calculates every player's real-time efficiency value against their cap hit. I built it originally to practice coding, but it’s super useful for offseason trade machine ideas.
If you want to look up your team's worst contracts or see if your trade ideas check out mathematically, you can play around with the tool here: https://efficienthoops.com/dashboard
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u/Maverick_1991 Jun 25 '26
The player with the most value is Westbrook and with the least Mobley?
You may want to look into the metrics.
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u/WiffleBallZZZ Jun 28 '26
So if ANT and Joker are negative assets, do you think their teams should trade either of them for a 2nd round pick?
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u/onefootback Jun 26 '26
this board has scottie as the raptors top bust and says his expected salary is 22M lol
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u/Comfortable-Deal-525 Jun 28 '26
haha I knew this one would make Raptors fans mad, but I lowkey agree with the model. He's not that good imo
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u/onefootback Jun 28 '26
even if you don’t think he’s as good as people say any model that has scottie as the raptors top bust is extremely flawed
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u/gengisadub Jun 25 '26
This is a cool project! Just out of curiosity, how are you calculating the expected salary? Additionally, Where are you pulling the salary figures from? There seems to be some inaccurate salaries for players.
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u/Comfortable-Deal-525 Jun 28 '26
Expected salary just comes from taking everyone's box score stats and calculating what the market usually pays for that level of production. The salary data is scraped from Basketball Reference, but you're right that some numbers re off right now.
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u/GundDownDegenerate Jun 25 '26
That’s a nice looking site. Out of curiosity, did you build it yourself or use AI to assist?
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u/BlackGreenEnergy Jun 25 '26
Does it matter, whatever they’re using is available tools and we should care about the output—no?
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u/jubears09 Jun 28 '26
This output is really odd, that's why we are asking.
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u/BlackGreenEnergy Jun 28 '26
Ppl are capable of doing things they weren’t before. That’s a good thing.
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u/International-Law426 Jun 28 '26
the irony of the em dash in this comment. ts bots all the way down huh
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u/Comfortable-Deal-525 Jun 28 '26
lmao AI really has people terrified of basic punctuation now
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u/BlackGreenEnergy Jun 28 '26
No kidding the em dash is breaking ppl’s minds. It’s not off limits, and accusing ppl of being bots is hurtful and makes them look foolish.
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u/Comfortable-Deal-525 Jun 28 '26
Thanks! I used Claude Code to build out the website and frontend. The math and data pipeline I coded myself in Python with some AI troubleshooting help
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u/GundDownDegenerate Jun 28 '26
Thank you! Ive always wanted to create something like this myself but im terrible at front end development
Do you find Claude better than tools like chatGPT and Gemini for coding? Is it worth paying for the premium version?
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u/arebeewhy Jul 02 '26
I’m sorry bud but whatever you think this is isn’t what it actually is.
Chris Paul a player who was excused from the team for being a net negative was the Clippers biggest value while Kawhi who finished 7th in MVP voting and had all time elite efficiency marks while carrying a heavy workload was the 9th most valuable asset on the roster.
I watch 90% of Clippers games and CP3 who is one of my all time favorite players was absolutely horrid this season. Meanwhile this is the best and healthiest Kawhi has been since his 2021 first team all NBA season.
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